Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 7: Steel Ball Run vol. 7

If you had told me at the beginning of this Part that Lucy Steel’s devotion to her (significantly older) husband Steven would see her thrust into multiple dangerous situations, I would’ve laughed at the suggestion.  Yet it’s that devotion that sees her playing on the sapphic affections of the President’s Wife, Scarlett, in order to get the body parts of the saint that he currently has in his body.  This not only delivers the most fetish-y part of the run so far, but one of its most violent as this ordinary woman finds herself up against the deadliest balloon animals you’ll ever see.  Meanwhile, Johnny and Gyoro are braving the icy wilds of Michigan not just to advance in the Steel Ball Run, but to find the next body part.  Two of the President’s men are waiting for them, and one has a couple personal connections to Gyoro.  Not only is he a practitioner of the same kind of technique that allows him to use steel balls as weapons, but Gyoro’s father is the reason he was exiled to America.

If you’ve read enough shonen manga, you’ll probably get a sense of where the conflict with this new character is headed before the resolution of his introductory arc.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as Araki makes him an appealing antagonist who really tests our protagonist’s skills, just something that makes this storyline feel a little more predictable than it should.  What I liked more was the business with Lucy that kicks off this volume as it’s not only weird and different, but considerably more tense as well.  There are some parts where the action comes off as a bit hard to follow, but it goes in some interesting directions while also setting up a major change in the status quo for one of the regular cast.  I kind of wish the rest of the volume was on that level, but what we got is still solidly “good enough.”